Brittle fracture in V-notches with end holes

In the present research, two brittle fracture criteria were developed in terms of the notch stress intensity factors to predict mode I fracture in engineering components weakened by V-notches with end holes (VO-notches). The criteria were based on the point stress and the mean stress failure concepts. To evaluate the validity of the criteria, first, 36 new fracture tests were conducted on a new notched specimen, namely the Brazilian disk containing central V-notch with end hole (VO-BD specimen) made of polymethyl-metacrylate. Three notch angles and four notch radii were considered in the experiments. Then, the experimentally obtained fracture loads were converted to the corresponding mode I notch fracture toughness values by mean of the finite element method in order to compare the test results with the theories. It was found that very good agreement exists generally between the experimental and theoretical results. Also, found in this research was that by increasing the VO-notch angle, the accuracy of the mean stress criterion decreases, particularly for larger notch radii. Although the accuracy of the criteria depends significantly on the notch geometry, except for the angle 90°, the average discrepancies of the mean stress criterion were less than 8.5% as well as those of the point stress criterion for the entire angles showing acceptable accuracy of the predictions.